Sue De Groot

Canadian man of letters Robertson Davies gave me two precepts to which I fervently adhere. The first is: "Self-pity is commonly held to be despicable; it can also be a real comfort if it does not become chronic." The second: "The first principle of aesthetic appreciation is that it can usually be doubled by sitting down."

When my boyfriend tells people that he proposed to me at the site of Napoleon’s tomb on St Helena Island, they smile as though humouring a macabre child. "Er, lovely," they say, wondering why he chose one of the remotest pieces of land on Earth for such a question — not to mention the spot where a French corpse was once interred.

It’s not surprising that a few decades ago South African mercenaries tried to stage a coup in the Seychelles. Who wouldn’t want ownership of a 115-island archipelago nestled in the lee of coral reefs and glimmering with all the green-gold life of every tropical fantasy? Sue de Groot finds that the Seychelles is like a slow, lingering infusion of oxygen to the system.